Ahh Ha! I found a quicker workflow to importing a model into 3DS Max without normals. It's v6 ;)
This model "Thank you to Steve, it's and excellent test" was imported as an obj using moi's output to ngons.

NGons came in great, but I knew I'd have to add smoothing groups. No biggy usually auto smooth at 45 degrees is great.
I added an edit poly, welded points as far as possible without damaging the model.
Then selected all polys and clicked the retriangulate button.
All that was left to do was less then 5 mins worth of edit triangulation, to turn some edges to eliminate sliver type polys.
Finally selected all polys and added auto smooth 45 degree. Any more bad smoothing errors will show up as to many smoothing
groups. This time however it created just 2 groups using auto. One flat grp, for the bottom, and the rest of the model for the other.



The moral of this story for me:
I think what I've learned from this thread is that you can't get away with not tweaking your model in some form or another
in your final rendering software. That is, it's very rare not to. ;) For me same has gone for C4D even 11.x. But being a well
seasoned veteran of polys, it's probably something I look at more closely then most CAD users. Although, you can see by my
3DS max version it hasn't been my full time career since at least 2005. ;)

To Steve's defense:
By the way yes slicing can take time to workout in Moi but can be a great way to force a sort of poly structure.
Although I can't get it anywhere near as clean as the radial sliced model shown earlier in this thread.

My Sliced model in Moi
Not meant to be for meshsmoothing just as a way to tidy things and force better smoothing groups in polygonal renders:


In retrospect, I'd say well over 75 percent of polygonal models I had created years ago with strictly 3DS Max required some
poly tweak or another. In particular when you had to use a boolean in that software. Booleans in polygonal software require hefty
point weld edge turn etc...

Hope I'm not hijacking